School Zone: aftermaths

Five year ago, I released a single-level "anniversary" game featuring Bilou in a school zone settings. A bit later, in early November, I had the opportunity to have it play-tested by my nephews, who were 7 to 13 years old by then. From there difficulties to approach the game, I added one "preliminary" level that is now level 1 in school Rush.

Voici 5 ans, je vous faisais un jeu-anniversaire avec Bilou dans la zone de l'école. Quelques semaines plus tard, en septembre, mes p'tits n'veux me faisaient me rendre compte qu'il me fallait quelque-chose d'autre comme niveau pour introduire les mécaniques du jeu. Ce niveau non-tutoriel est depuis devenu le premier niveau de School Rush.

Download SchoolRush - JLN build.

So yeah, the 5 levels I'm releasing today for Bilou's 25th  anniversary took me long time to make. And it doesn't even feature the level that started it all. Because meanwhile, I grew interest in speedruns, and I wanted the game to focus on going as fast as we could and save the books. Things with a focus on wandering, discovering, solving or exploring will happen in another small game.

I'm proud I could get feedback from several professionals with the 2016 release. I hope the game is better now. May there be many of you finding it, may you have a fun time playing it. This is my gift to whoever makes free software, free music, or free videos. Thank you all for making coding possible/enjoyable. 

The engine code is LGPL, the tools 'used to make it (animations and level editors) are GPL, the art and level design remain my copyrights, but they are free to play, and free to share unmodified as part as this School Rush release.

Aujourd'hui, le développement de School Rush prend fin. Ce fut long, parfois fastidieux, mais je voulais l'amener jusqu'au bout. Comme dans tout jeu, il y a des choses qui ont été abandonnées en cours de route. Soit qu'elles ne convenaient pas, soit qu'elles m'écartaient du but premier du jeu... soit qu'elles promettaient de devenir un gouffre de développement rendant irréaliste toute sortie tant que je serais en solo sur le développement. Que ce jeu soit mon cadeau à tous ceux qui ont écrit du code free software que j'utilise tous les jours, les musiques que j'écoute en codant, les vidéos sympa qui m'ont donné envie de continuer. Merci à tous pour votre travail.

I'll just update November post with the link to December contents, if you don't mind. How-to-play etc. is there. If you're looking for a changes list, it's been posted already ;)

Featured on PDRoms.de

History tracked on playeradvance, tigsource, homebrewlegends

SchoolRush NY2018

Happy New Year Everyone. I've got a new build of SchoolRush uploaded. Hope you'll enjoy it. For those of you who mastered the game, you'll discover the credits level and the hint towards the secret, vertical level that I've been working on half this year.

Prêts pour la nouvelle année ? Voici une version de Bilou: School Rush avec un niveau secret terminé, des images de chargement qui racontent l'histoire du jeu, la séquence de crédits ... Et pour ceux qui n'arriveraient pas encore jusque là, deux modifications qui rendent le jeu moins impitoyables: on peut "nager" hors de l'encre (encore faut-il pouvoir trouver une plate-forme où atterrir) et on grimpe automatiquement dans les encriers quand on tombe dessus, même si on tenait un taille-crayon entre les mains.

For everyone, you'll enjoy the "swim up for your live" mechanics that will let you go forward even if you missed a jump and fell into the ink. Well, you cannot recover *every* missed jump that way, but it's already much more forgiving than it used to be.

You'll also enjoy how jumping into an Inkjet now automatically let you in, dropping the Dumb Blador you're carrying, if any.

Story and gameplay migrated to latest release post
how to play
Get the .NDS image and play it on your homebrew-ready console or in an emulator, such as DeSmuME. See latest post if you need extra explanation/instructions for running homebrews.

School Rush Ready

Here comes a new challenge(r). Bilou: School Rush is at last ready for "VIP" players. There are no more things I need to add/fix for those 4 levels of platforming challenge. It may not be significant change compared to the last release, and these are clearly minor fixes compared to the last build, but it means the player should now no longer need some briefing: all the aspect should be readable and clean.

 Nous y sommes enfin! une version de School Rush qui tient plus du jeu que d'un béta-test. Ce n'est pas encore aussi parfait que je le voudrais, et ça manque sans doute de nouveauté pour mes fidèles testeurs, mais cette fois, j'estime avoir atteint le niveau de finition sur les quatres niveaux disponibles pour qu'il ne soit pas irrespectueux d'en parler aux dévelopeurs professionnels avec lesquels je suis en contact.

Si vous vous demandez "mais comment on y joue", n'hésitez pas à jeter un oeil au let's play de Pirez. (Enfin, assurez-vous quand-même d'avoir un émulateur NDS. DeSmuME, par exemple.

gameplay

You're controlling Bilou, a blue, ball-shaped explorer. You make him JUMP with the (A) button and grab things (or throw them) with (B). Your goal is to reach the right of each level before you're caught by the ever-raising ink.
You'll need to be quick, too. Use (R) or double-tap in left/right directions as if you were a pink, living vacuum cleaner.

You can stomp some monsters, you can throw sharpeners at others. Remember: the pencil soldats are the only real threat here, and they must be stopped from pouring even more ink for their autoritarist plans. Everything else that looks dangerous is mostly acting on fear and may prove very useful if you keep your head cold. Think about how useful a bobbing sponge could be if you could ride it (B). or how high an inkwell could shoot you ...

There are rumours of magical artifacts that could help you. The Fist of Justice, that noone can stand against (double-B) and the Floating Twister (hold A), that let you reach far away places. It's unlikely the pendats will let you recover them without a fight, though.

Story

At the far east of this school-like country, there is a gauge that will stop the ink. Rush for it! The books city is close to be destroyed once for all, and the elders' knowledge will be lost. This must be another plot from Square Root, who decided that mathematics are the only thing worth of being written down.
Everyone here seems to believe that Bilou is a sort of legendary hero...

How to play

Get the NDS image and play it on your homebrew-ready console or in an emulator, such as DeSmuME. See this page if you need extra explanation/instructions for running homebrews.

WARNING : difficulty selection on this release is partly broken : you have to touch the desired difficulty to get it selected. UP and DOWN directions, although changing the cursor's position, have no effect.

Go play SchoolRush!

I got all those little details fixed now, and at last, I am ready to release an improved version of Bilou: School Rush with the completed bottom screen. It hints you what to do. It reminds you how powerful or weak you are. It makes whatever happens on the top screen easier to decide about.

WARNING : I just (May 10th) spotted a bug when running on the Real Thing.
 A fix is written. It has been uploaded on May 11th. 
Look for SchoolRush-lazy.nds packaged within SchoolRush-cow.zip

School Rush is a speed-driven platformer. The action takes place above the ink. Don't fall. And make sure you don't let the raising it reaching you. If you loved challenge of platformers of the Amiga age, if you're the kind of player that seeks mastery of a game and enjoy to re-play the game to see whether you've progressed, School Rush is made for you

• use the D-PAD to walk left and right and double-tap the D-PAD to run (better run whenever you can),
• use A to JUMP and FLOAT.
• use B to GRAB and THROW.
• double-tap B when you have the punch power-up to PUNCH freaky supplies.

Oh, and if you're a dad or mum with kids, the 'easy' mode of School Rush is for them: it offers a more free playing mode where ink doesn't move, allowing to toy with the environment and learn how to go through obstacles in a more friendly way.

PS: now all's left for me to develop is the extra 20% : the secret level, endings and power-up shop.

PPS: voilà, Gilles. C'est la release dont je parlais ce matin: Bilou, la balle bleue qui essaie de devenir la plus rapide du monde! Assez rapide en tout cas pour arriver à stopper la montée d'encre qui menace la livrille. Sûrement encore un coup de ces envahisseurs de crayons-soldats. Heureusement, Bilou à plus d'un tour dans son sac!

20 ans!

Il y a 20 ans, Bilou voyait sa première aventure esquissée sous les crayons de mon frère d'après les programmes CPC de Pierrick. J'ai fait de mon mieux alors pour transformer les "idées papier" de mes ainés en lignes de code et en pixels, mais la School Zone m'avait tenu en échec: le niveau de complexité dépassait ce que mes outils pouvaient supporter, menant peu à peu à la mise au grenier du projet.

Gain speed to break through that pencil barrier.

Aujourd'hui, je prends ma revanche avec ce homebrew pour Nintendo DS qui vous emmène à travers le dernier niveau dessiné par mon frère avec les monstres de Pierrick. Plus vous ramasserez de bonus, plus on vous emmène loin dans le temps...

That's it: the anniversary level celebrating the 20 years of Bilou video game sketching, design and coding is ready to play. At last, Pierrick's ennemies and my brother's level come to life and challenge you to gather all the letters scattered through the chemestry classroom. The more you get, the further we take you back in time. Can you make it back to 1993 ?

A: sauter et rebondir / jump & bounce
B: attraper et lancer / grab & throw
Bilou can run faster if you do a sharp turn back (tap left and slide to the right to run to the right). You can bounce on monsters by tapping A just when stomping them.

Pour courir vers la droite, pressez d'abord la croix vers la gauche puis glissez le pouce vers la droite. Pour courir vers la gauche, faites l'inverse. La "barrière crayon" peut être traversée si Bilou tombe d'assez haut.

Playing on the Real Thing
You need a DS and a linker device that can play homebrew files. With most linkers sold after 2007 (that support DLDI), all you'll have to do is drop the .nds file somewhere on your media card and launch it as any game.

With older linkers, you need to patch the .nds file manually using the driver compatible with your hardware. If your hardware need patching and you haven't patched, you'll see the bottom screen displaying only purple background with the words "NODA!" written in the middle. (and other boot info around).

Playing on an emulator
You're suggested to use desmume and follow these instructions to set the "GBA slot image" as being the .nds file itself. Other emulators (notably iDeaS, patch as R4TF) will require manual DLDI patching (see above). You'll get a better experience with a SNES-like gamepad.

Known Bugs/limitations
Although it's an anniversary, it's also a first release. There are things that are not visually consistent and room for improvement. It was however decided to release early and that those features would be left for future levels/releases.

edit: fix anniversary-G88 released.

Les Secrets de Titus

Je suis tombé sur deux mines d'or: http://ttf.mine.nu/ (le fan club de Titus the Fox) et http://pre2.mine.nu/ (le fan club de Prehistorik 2)

"Titus Interactive was a long-running French software publisher that produced games for various formats over its lifetime." Voilà ce que Wikipedia nous apprend sur Titus, la société qui a écrit et produit Prehistorik, Titus the Fox (aka Moktar), et bien d'autres. Pour moi, Titus Interactive, c'est tout une époque... Les jeux DOS à la limite de l'impossible, bourré de bonus cachés, de monstres vicieux à côté desquels les Blôrks affrontés par le barbare de Kid Paddle font figure d'enfants de choeur en barboteuse rose à fleurs!


Titus interactive, ce sont des heures et des heures passées chez Alain Gillon ou Vivien Vanoirbeek à chercher après la caisse qu'on allait bien pouvoir balancer sur ce pocheron-lanceur-de-fléchette qui nous barrait la route tout en évitant les bouledogues survitaminés et les poubelles farceuses.


Titus Interactive, ce sont encore plus d'heures à fouiller le niveau à la recherche de cette porte cachée (comprenez: un emplacement quelconque dans le jeu où vous allez être téléporté vers un nouvel endroit à condition de rester "accroupi" 3 secondes), et de stress intense quand enfin apparaît la lampe magique (si, si) ou l'item généralement quelconque révélateur du code hexa qui permettra de reprendre depuis le niveau en question, dans un univers où les sauvegarde dans les jeux vidéo n'existaient que pour les aventures "pointer/cliquer".

Titus Interactive, enfin, c'est la migraine garantie quand on rentrait chez soi les doigts en feu, surexcité, et ayant passé toutes les heures sus-mentionnées à subir un scrolling brutal (genre "page down" dans firefox) chaque fois que le personnage s'approchait un peu trop du bord de l'écran... et quelques claviers dont la barre d'espace a été rendue complètement inutilisable.

Grand merci, donc, à Jesses pour ses deux sites en or... Et à tous les employés de Titus Interactive qui ont participé à nos rêves de gosses au dépend de leur salaire (j'espère qu'ils s'en sont sorti plus tard, et s'ils veulent un taré pour porter tout ça sur DS, je signe dès l'année prochaine -- peut-être)

I am somehow nostalgic towards that era where "gameplay" and "level design" were words you never needed when talking about a video game. It was the era of DOS games, when designers knew the game's lifetime is inversly proportionnal to the character's lifetime -- the era of Titus Interactive.

Relaying on our neighbours' keyboard, we were trying to duck foes' shots, hunting for hours the throwable crate that we could use to dispatch the next grumpy and vicious monster that was blocking us on the path to the HEX code that we could use to restart our quest at the same level. Then other hours were wasted searching for "hidden doors" that would give us the additional lifepoint we were missing to reach the end of the level ... once we found it :P

We then came back at home for dinner, with our mum asking what we did to get such headaches (if only she knew how basic scrolling was!) and how on earth we could be that excited ... Thanks Jesses for your goldmine websites ... and thank you, all dev'ers at Titus Interactive who built our dreams at the expense of your salary.